In The Market For
by justcourbeau
Summary: A few things happened, all at once and in no particular order. [Or: an instagram au involving road trips, and of course, Betty saves the day.][Bughead Meet Cute, Background Varchie, Instagram AU]


**A/N: Modern au's involving social media are becoming a trend around these parts. Anyway, this is for Jandy.**

* * *

Pike Place Market was a bustling hive of activity on a regular day, but add in a sunny Saturday full of tourists, and suddenly it became an absolute nightmare. The only thing keeping Jughead sane was the fact that his height meant he could spot Archie's ginger head bobbing through a crowd even from a hundred paces. Jughead hardly worried about Veronica - where Archie was, there she would be. And if the two happened to get separated, well, Veronica could fend for herself just fine. He'd seen her in action plenty of times before.

Their Great American Road Trip across the northern part of the country had been surprisingly smooth and much more enjoyable than Jughead had originally anticipated, considering Veronica hadn't been part of the plans until recently. In a last minute decision, Veronica had asked to join on the first leg of their boys' journey, and so there in the trunk, nestled between their backpacks and the old blue cooler previously used during Andrews' family camping getaways, was Veronica's vibrant purple luggage.

Never in his life had Jughead ever thought he would be good enough friends with Veronica Lodge to not be irritated by her crashing his and Archie's much-anticipated road trip, but so far she'd let him pick the music 73% of the time, and most minor misgivings had been forgotten.

"Arch!" Jughead called, and the ginger head swivelled around for a moment before Archie picked Jughead out over the crowd. Jughead watched him nod and turn, ducking his head a few inches, presumably to speak to Veronica. A minute later, Jughead was leading them out a nearby door and into the sun again.

"We better go, or I'm gonna be late meeting the building coordinator," Veronica mentioned.

"That's why I called you." He nodded.

"We parked this way, right?" Archie started off up the road. Soon, the trio was back in Archie's car, headed for Veronica's new apartment in the Georgetown neighbourhood.

A few things happened, all at once and in no particular order.

Jughead finished rolling the other back seat window down for some air circulation.

Archie took a corner tightly.

A large container truck glided past them in the opposite direction as Archie corrected himself with a jerk.

A gust of air was forced through all the open windows, and Jughead's fingers were a fraction of a second too late. His beanie was gone, out the window, and Jughead turned to watch it disappear around a corner, his face frozen in horror.

* * *

Betty pulled her ponytail tighter, higher on her scalp, and checked her ear buds were securely in place before taking off at a jog.

Her internship had been so busy this week, with lots of late nights spent pouring over copy for a rush-to-release young adult novel. She hadn't had a chance for a real run in three days, and her body was damn-near aching for it. So she let herself fall into a rhythm, and once she was warmed up, Betty pushed herself to speed down the boardwalk for a long stretch of path. Taking a detour, she emerged onto some brick streets and raced toward her goal: the Farmer's Market.

She just turned on to Pike and dropped her pace as she came closer to the Market proper when she spotted a small, grey bundle on the pavement, caught on the edge of a newspaper box. She bent to pick it up, lifting it gingerly. It didn't look like garbage, and it hadn't been out in the weather or anything. Betty glanced around, hoping to spot someone patting their head or their person, wondering where their - what was it? A _hat_ \- had gotten to.

No such luck.

Betty unfolded it, giving it a once over. No tag with a name or a number. Just some small metal pins, a small circle and a rectangular box.

It was an odd time of year to be wearing knitted hats.

Betty prayed, lifting it to her nose, that she wasn't about to be surprised with anything offensive, but it was fine. If anything, it smelled like shampoo or laundry detergent. Still, no one was looking around frantically as if they might be the owner just discovering its absence.

It was kind of unique, with ribs of stitches and pointed tips turned up to form the ghost of a brim. And it was soft and pliable, squishy and well-loved. And so she disregarded all thoughts of things like lice, and plopped it on her head. Pulling out her phone and opening the camera, Betty adjusted one side and looked up at one drooping edge over her brow, snapping a picture.

* * *

"Jug, are you okay?" Archie asked, his eyes settling on Jughead in the rearview mirror.

Jughead's throat was tight, and it took him a second to get it working again.

"My hat," he replied simply, feeling the tightness around his eyes, the tug down on the corners of his mouth. His limbs were heavy, like they'd been filled with lead, and he didn't move a muscle.

"Your… hat?" Veronica asked, turning in her seat, her brow tight with a frown as she searched his head and the backseat and then the floor for the familiar sight of his beanie.

"It's gone."

Silence filled the car as Archie continued making his way through the city streets, the sounds of cars passing and sidewalk crossings floating in the windows whenever they slowed and came to a stop for a red light.

"I… you just had it," Archie pressed.

"Gust of - it went out the window," Jughead offered abruptly. He hadn't been without his hat in over a decade, and the sudden, unexpected loss of it made his stomach clench painfully.

"I'm sorry, Jug. We can go back and look for it?" Veronica suggested, sending Archie a side glance the ginger couldn't see. "I can just drop my stuff off and we can turnaround and go back."

* * *

' _who wears a beanie in the middle of summer? #lostandfound #findmyowner #getmehome'._

Betty tagged it as Pike Place Market, and posted the photo to her instagram before continuing on to browse through the stands of fresh produce inside. She picked out the juiciest looking strawberries she could find, and went in search of mangoes.

* * *

"I'm sorry, man," Archie said, clapping him on the back.

"It's okay, Arch."

"I even looked in the garbage bins," his friend pressed.

"Me too," Veronica offered, somewhat dejected. "Just in case."

"I know," Jughead sighed. "Oh, well. Maybe it was time, anyway. We're moving out here, university, it's a time for change, right?"

"That's… surprisingly optimistic of you," Archie commented, perplexed.

But maybe it _was_ for the best.

Jughead Jones had spent the last 19 years of his life in small town New York, and he was moving to the Pacific Northwest to study creative writing. Luck had never really seemed to be on Jughead's side - absent mother, drunk father, wrong side of the tracks, barely enough money to put food in his stomach, sleeping in closets and garages and under particularly covering foliage - but finally he'd caught a break. Acceptance to the University of Washington, in the same city that his childhood best friend was going to be attending Seattle University. It was a small blessing, but he was taking it.

"It's okay. We should probably get going if we wanna make it to Olympia before nightfall, though."

"Right, yeah." Archie nodded. "You want us to drop you home, Ronnie?"

"Yes, please, Archiekins."

They left the petite, darkhaired beauty in the city, happily beginning to unpack her new apartment, and made their way south on the second half of their adventure. Neither of the boys had ever visited a part of the country that was more sand and rust than green and brown, and so a trip south along the coast, and a return up through more desert was ahead of them. With just the two of them, they decided on roughing it, pulling into a place outside Olympia where they had pre-booked a campsite online.

"Thanks for being so chill about Ronnie tagging along," Archie piped up as they were setting up the tent for the night.

"It's no big deal, Arch."

"But it kinda is, though. We've been talking about a road trip since before we could drive." The ginger snorted in recollection.

"Maybe, but she's not stuck to your side like glue - she's letting you go out into the world alone with me for part of it, at least." Jughead laughed, clicking another set of poles into place. "Besides, she's not so bad, when she's not nagging me about eating things that are green."

"Speaking of, I saw a diner type joint up the road - want something?"

Jughead and Archie compiled a list of food to order, and Archie went to go pick it up. The sun was just starting to set, sending everything into slanted darkness. The trees towered over everything, their spires piercing upward into the darkening sky and becoming increasingly harder to focus on, black shadows beginning to saturate the woods around the nearby sites. Jughead pulled their sleeping bags and backpacks inside, unrolling the blow up mattresses and starting the process of inflation.

Jughead flopped onto his bed, the sleeping bag material swooshing and gliding underneath him as he got comfy. Fred Andrew's industrial flashlight was propped in the middle of the tent, and Jughead flicked it on and pulled a paperback out of his bag.

He couldn't settle, though.

He kept reaching up to play with a lock of hair, or run his fingertips along one edge of his hat, but it wasn't there. It didn't feel the same - it felt so wrong and naked.

By the time Archie got back from the diner and tossed him a bag full of deliciously greasy burgers and fries, Jughead was fighting the urge to be surly about it again.

"You'll never believe this," Archie started with, flopping onto his own bed a few feet away. "But I think Veronica found your hat."

* * *

It wasn't until Betty had returned home, put her groceries away, and showered that she checked her phone again. She as greeted by a long string of instagram notifications. Someone named _ronnielodge_ had sent her a chunk of messages through the direct messaging function.

 _hi you dont kno me_

 _and this is totally random and weird_

 _but i think thats my friends hat_

 _the one you found at pike place mrkt_

 _its like_

 _his favourite thing ever_

 _and super important to him_

 _and im pretty sure hed lose his mind if he knew he could get it back_

 _he looked like a sad puppy all afternoon_

 _ **Hey.**_

 _ **Yeah, I found it this afternoon outside the Market. I was really not expecting to be able to return to it the owner but that's great! If he has instagram, get him to message me.**_

 _ **We can arrange a pickup.**_

 _so clandestine i love it yes thank you bettycooper1002_

 _well be in touch_

* * *

The girl he was staring at on his phone made his brain short circuit.

Veronica had texted her username to him and he'd dutifully looked her up. Low and behold, her last post is a picture of who he assumed was Betty Cooper, his hat perched on her blonde head. In the background, he recognized the fleetingly familiar backdrop of brick, but what was most distracting - even more so than the sight of his hat sitting on someone else's head - was the fact that her eyes were so green. So _clear_ and _bright_ , that he wasn't sure he'd ever glimpsed green in it's purest form until that exact second. Every other shade of green he'd seen, every other iteration, every other tone and tint, had all been terribly lacklustre attempts to recreatewhat he was looking at on his moderately-sized touch screen and he was a little dumbfounded.

"Did you message her yet?" Archie's voice drifted over from his own position on his back, his phone lighting up the corner of the tent behind him just as Jughead's was opposite him.

"I - not yet," he mumbled, swiping his thumb up slowly and scrolling through her feed like a man possessed.

Jughead Jones wasn't ignorant of beauty, on the whole. He just didn't ever really think beauty deserved to be the merritt everyone held higher than all others. He could admit when he found a girl attractive, but physical attractiveness had never been enough for him, personally. There needed to be something _more_.

And yet somehow, this girl he had never met, never spoken to, made his chest clench tighter with every glimpse he got of her through her posts. There were shots of what looked like her work desk, covered in stacks of paper and what looked like… manuscripts? Jughead's heart gave an abnormally strong thump, and he felt the rush in his head.

 _Hey, ronnielodge pointed me in your direction._

 _ **You must be the owner of the lost beanie.**_

 _I am, yes._

 _ **Are you still nearby? I live pretty close to where I found it. I can run out and find you real quick.**_

 _No, I'm already in Olympia._

He was about to type a variation of 'can you hang onto it until I get back?' when she responded.

 _ **I'll keep it safe until you get back. Unless you're not coming back? Cause then I'll mail it to you.**_

 _No, we are. We're just driving down the coast and then looping back to Washington._

* * *

We?

Betty's interest was piqued, and so she questioned it.

 _My best friend and I are road tripping before school starts up._

She was surprised when, a second later, there was a dark picture punctuated by a bright spot of light, the brightness casting a white glow and sending someone's profile and the inside of what looked like a tent into relief.

 _Archie facetiming Veronica aka ronnielodge ft tent._

Betty laughed.

 _ **Oil on canvas, 2017.**_

 _Finally, someone has recognized my talent._

 _ **Truly, that is art. Message me when you get back to the city!**_

* * *

Three days later, in Big Sur, his phone pinged.

Veronica had tagged him in something, and he swiped the notification open.

It was a picture he hadn't been expecting, and it came as a surprise. His stomach bottomed out.

Veronica and Betty were squished into the frame together, the two of them beaming at the camera. Betty's hair was down this time, a golden haze of waves settled over her shoulders and spilling onto Veronica's as well. Tapping the picture, he wasn't surprised to find Veronica had labelled him as the beanie pictured on Betty's head.

Something lodged in his throat as his gaze traced over the fuzzy line of his hat, down the swoop of a blonde curl, over the curve of her tanned shoulder and up the slope of her jaw.

' _fast friends, destined to be'_ was Veronica's caption, and below, Betty's comment, also tagging him.

' _Don't worry, jugheadjonesiii. We might be at the top of a carousel, but I won't drop your hat. I will protect this jumble of yarn with my life.'_

When Archie got back from a trail jog, Jughead was still grinning.

* * *

 **A/N: Leaving this open ended in case I get the urge to add to it. ❤︎**


End file.
